


oh mercy i implore

by aceofdiamonds



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-25
Updated: 2018-01-25
Packaged: 2019-03-09 10:29:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13479621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aceofdiamonds/pseuds/aceofdiamonds
Summary: harry in the hours after the battle endsAnd upstairs, in the bed nearest the window, their fifth roommate sleeps and sleeps





	oh mercy i implore

**Author's Note:**

> because for all i’ve written about post war harry and ginny i’ve never written immediately immediately after the war ends harry and ginny. this was going to be as happy as it could be while still being somewhat realistic, but then i listened to vienna by billy joel on repeat while i wrote it and, despite that being a hopeful song, it’s set a decidedly more subdued tone than i intended. and it also turned out not very harry/ginny at all.
> 
> i might make this a series!!! of every day after the war for a week? bc i didn't even fit in the main image that i wanted to when i started this. but i haven't posted anything in months and i liked the natural end this came to.

  


  
The war ends with Tom Riddle’s body hitting the floor at 4.48am on the second of May.  
  
The war ends and with it people collapse with joy, with grief, with a fear they’ve kept locked away for months and months.  
  
The war ends and Harry Potter consoles the mourning, shakes hands with the grateful, and nods and nods until he can barely move.  
  
They expect speeches from him, promises, stories and stories of his life as The Boy Who Lived, as The Chosen One, and now as The Boy Who Won the War.  
  
But instead he slips away, mends his wand, and climbs the staircase to the bed he’s missed all year.  
  
He thought he would have had trouble sleeping, the past 24 hours whirling through his head, but dying takes it out of you, makes you bone tired, an exhaustion so deep Harry’s eyes are closed before he can even close the curtains around his bed.  


.

  
(The rest of the Gryffindor boys: Ron and Hermione curl up on a armchair in the corner of the common room, both of them too shaken, too wired, to do more than hold each other close and try not to think about the future that has suddenly blown open, scary and unknown.

Neville: a hero, he is surrounded by students, young and old, Gryffindor and not, each clambering for his story, how he knew to kill the snake. With Harry in hiding for the year, Neville has become one of their beacons of hope, the kid they used to laugh at, the stupid boy with the scary grandmother and the bane of McGonagall’s life (Kingsley Shacklebolt, Minister of Magic in all but confirmation, approaches him as well, makes him an offer that makes his head spin, but that’s all for later).

And Dean and Seamus: They’ve been inseparable since the beginning; the comic relief, the artist, always on the fringes of Harry’s drama. For now they’re sitting in the Great Hall, hands linked, mouths running and running of everything they’ve missed, stopping too many times to grin, relieved, stunned, that they made it to the other side.

And upstairs, in the bed nearest the window, their fifth roommate sleeps and sleeps.)  


.

  
Harry wakes up alone in the dorm and the paranoid part of him wonders if it’s because no one wants to be near the boy who died and came back to life (no, he’s _definitely_ being paranoid but your mental health issues don’t disappear the second your enemy is dead). It’s probably more likely that they wanted to give him space, that they wanted to leave him be, that they had other things to do than sit by Harry’s bed as he sleeps away the ache that comes with dying, with losing a piece of a soul you never know you had.

But he sits up, rubs his eyes, and tries to find the energy to get out of bed. There are things he needs to do, people he needs to talk to, but for now, that all sounds too much, too soon. So he sits, his head resting on his knees, and he takes deep breaths, reminds himself that it’s all over now. It’s time to recover, to rebuild, to move to peacetime.

 

.

 

There’s time to think about what he’ll say to Ginny when he finally gets a chance to talk to her but everything falls out of his throat when he sees her on his way down to the Great Hall. She turns away from her conversation with Hannah Abbott, walks towards him, and all he can do is hug her. Ginny with her tear-stained face, her bloody shoulder, her resilience that has been rocked, torn apart, but not destroyed.

“I’m sorry about Fred,” he says, voice hoarse, into Ginny’s hair, her face pressed into his shoulder. Her arms are tight around his waist, holding and holding, and Harry doesn’t want to step away, not for any of the people desperate to talk to him, not for anything at all.

Harry, who has found the touch of others, of their hands reaching for his own, for thanks, for luck, for a superstition borne from desperation that his body is brushed with a magic beyond everything known to them, invasive and exhausting. They’re desperate to be close to their hero but he is tired and his body is sore and when people stroke him, grab him, rest gentle hands on his shoulders, his skin throbs and he clenches his teeth so he doesn’t flinch.

But now, he buries his face in Ginny’s hair, and holds on.

They stand there, holding each other up, quiet and calm in the midst of the chaos, and Harry’s heart slows, his breathing levels out, and he feels a little more hopeful.

There’s a conversation to be had -- one of Horcruxes and stealing swords and shining lights before death. But they have time for that later. That’s what has come out of this: time. For now, it’s enough to feel how solid the other is, how alive they are, and the rest will come.

  
.

  
(There’s a panic later on in the day when no one can find Harry Potter and everyone frantically turns their head to look for their shining saviour who has dragged them through the last three years.  
  
He’s found by Parvati Patil who doesn’t raise the alarm but turns around and leaves Harry tucked into a corner of Gryffindor Common Room with Ginny, their heads tucked together, their thoughts and secrets quiet between them.

She says that she can’t find him, that he’ll be hiding somewhere, and she lets McGonagall know the truth. McGonagall nods, says, nothing, and they decide that he’s okay for now, he can have a breather, can begin to readjust, and everything else will come after.)

  



End file.
